Improving travel and grant application systems

Background

A worldwide NGO based in Europe with a focus on solving public
health issues affecting people in impoverished areas. Experts in
respiratory systems they partner with governments and organisations to
share scientific evidence for solutions to lung health issues.

The Union World Conference brings together scientists, volunteers and members of affected communities to share their experiences and knowledge to seek solutions for populations affected. The Union offers travel scholarships to authors of accepted papers, volunteers from affected communities, and affected community members.

Improving travel and grant application systems

Challenges

The travel scholarship
application processes for any two conferences are rarely alike. A complex function with time consuming manual administration exacerbated by standardisation and localisation challenges.

The Union wanted a system that would enable people to easily
submit their applications for travel scholarships along with any
required supporting information, with an intuitive back-end
administration area where administrators could view and approve or
decline applications.

A significantly more intuitive, robust and responsive system that saved users time and reduced administration costs.

Results

Following a thorough investigation it was decided that creating a new interface was a more cost and time effective solution than a updating their current legacy system. Additional time was saved using the Laravel framework, this made deployment swift and the interface responsive.

We created an intuitive environment for applicants to build and submit applications in a secure and standardised manner, saving both time and effort for both users and administrators.

Using up-to-date open source technology allowed the new system to be:
accessible from any device anywhere; easily integrated into The Unions
back-end; and future-proofed as future changes are simple and fast to
implement. This led to us achieving all of The Union's specification
requirements and their expectations.